#27 Zodiac Killer (Wes)

Zodiac Killer

Bad movie time again and this week it was a serial killer movie inspired by the serial killer who stalked LA in the 1970s, but was never apprehended. Like many horror movie fans I’ve read a lot of books on serial killers, and watched as many documentaries and movies about them as I can find. So having a serial killer movie this low down on our list came as a surprise. Then I saw that this movie was directed by Ulli Lommel and suddenly I started looking through my Facebook invites to see if Hannibal Lecter had invited me to dinner so I could get out of bad movie night. Unfortunately for me he hadn’t.

Michael Cosnick (Vladimir Maksic) works in an old peoples home, where he overhears a man plotting to kill his grandmother. Incensed by his callousness, Michael kills the man, which sets him on the path of becoming a serial killer. When the papers compare him to the original Zodiac Killer, Michael takes this as inspiration to become a copycat murderer. Will the police catch up with him? Will he actually research the murders he’s supposed to be copying and commit anything like them? Have I finally found a worse serial killer movie than Ice Cream Man?

Some directors have such long lasting careers that they just completely defy all logic. Ulli Lommel is one such director. Not to say that everything he’s ever done has been bad, I actually like some of his earlier movies. The Tenderness of Wolves (based on the German serial killer Fritz Haarman) and The Boogeyman are both decent movies, but his later output really is terrible. He’s like the Steve Martin of directors.

Lommel’s direction isn’t only sloppy, but it’s desperate as well. Since the budget clearly didn’t extend to hiring a decent make up artist, Lommel instead inserts various autopsy photos into the movie in a bid to shock. If anything these photos remind you how horrific some peoples crimes are, and how bad this movie is at portraying anything like them.

Because of the use of the Zodiac Killer’s crimes as the plot, it’s hard not to compare this movie with David Fincher’s Zodiac. Aside from the obvious differences in budget and quality of actors, Fincher’s movie shows how a good director can take an already fascinating story and base a movie around it. It was extremely well researched and beautifully shot, and at no point did it feature a bunch of mysterious men wearing black hoods without eyeholes cut into them, which is way more than Zodiac Killer can say for itself.

The other movie I found myself comparing this to was the remake/sequel of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Both movies are based on copycats of real life serial killers that were never caught (The Town That Dreaded Sundown was based on the killings by the murderer known as The Phantom Killer in Texarkana in 1946). However The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a perfectly watchable movie for a reimagining (even though it essentially tells the same story with the same murders, including the infamous trombone scene, it is the story of a copycat murderer inspired by the film of the original murders). Its reveal as to who is committing the latest murders doesn’t seem ridiculously unrealistic, and The Phantom Killer actually has eyeholes cut into his mask, which is way more than the stupid bunch of mysterious hooded men in Zodiac Killer can say for themselves.

Those mysterious men really do help sum up why Zodiac Killer is such a ridiculous movie. I think they're meant to be a secret organisation of powerful men who meet up and boast about their latest murders (well they say who they killed), and then decide whether or not a killer can operate in their area. They seemingly meet in a church, say amen at the end of their meetings, name themselves after signs of the zodiac and apparently respect law and order. I don’t think even Lommel knew their purpose in the movie. I think he just bought a job lot of (eyehole-less) black hooded masks cheaply on eBay and needed to find a reason to use them. But as menacing secret society’s go, they’re less The Court of Owls and more Caught by the Short and Curlies.

We’ve now reached the point where the movies we’re watching are sub-porn movie level acting, but this film brings us to a new low. It’s like watching members of the general public, with absolutely no acting experience ever, trying to act out a scene in cheap daytime TV show about giving a house a makeover, or maybe something about buying and selling collectables. I think the only movie I’ve seen with worse acting is the slasher movie made behind the scenes at the Vans Warped Tour in 2003, Punk Rock Holocaust. It makes me worry, that as we still have so many movies left, we will soon surpass that level and I know we have a couple more Paris Hilton movies on our list, so I think I know when that come to pass.

Watching Zodiac Killer, it’s clear that when it comes to making a decent movie Ulli Lommel is stuck up Wolf Creek without a paddle. Using a Zodiac Killer copycat, who doesn’t actually copy any of the original killers crimes is one of the most incompetent, and cynical moves to cash in on the murders of real life people that I’ve ever heard of. A dreadful movie that in the spirit of the Zodiac I shall sum up with my horoscope for the day:

Gemini

A lunar tie with the nebulous energies of Neptune means that tonight you will be forced to sit through a movie so bad that you could pull a better film from Uranus without even trying. Avoid men in eyeless black masks and care home workers. Your lucky numbers aren’t going to get you out of this one.